Sally’s excitement went down a degree or two,
but he was not wholly appeased.

“Why, Aleck, we’ll have it, you know—­and
so soon, too. He’s probably out of his
troubles before this; it’s a hundred to nothing
he’s selecting his brimstone-shovel this very
minute. Now, I think—­”

Aleck shuddered, and said:

“How can you, Sally! Don’t
talk in that way, it is perfectly scandalous.”

“Oh, well, make it a halo, if you like, I
don’t care for his outfit, I was only just talking.
Can’t you let a person talk?”

“But why should you want to talk in that
dreadful way? How would you like to have people
talk so about you, and you not cold yet?”

“Not likely to be, for one while, I reckon,
if my last act was giving away money for the sake
of doing somebody a harm with it. But never mind
about Tilbury, Aleck, let’s talk about something
worldly. It does seem to me that that mine is
the place for the whole thirty. What’s
the objection?”

“All the eggs in one basket—­that’s
the objection.”

“All right, if you say so. What about
the other twenty?
What do you mean to do with that?”

“There is no hurry; I am going to look around
before I do anything with it.”

“All right, if your mind’s made up,”
signed Sally. He was deep in thought awhile,
then he said:

“There’ll be twenty thousand profit coming
from the ten a year from now. We can spend that,
can we, Aleck?”

Aleck shook her head.

“No, dear,” she said, “it won’t
sell high till we’ve had the first semi-annual
dividend. You can spend part of that.”

“Shucks, only that—­and a whole
year to wait! Confound it, I—­”

“Oh, do be patient! It might even be declared
in three months —­it’s quite within
the possibilities.”

“Oh, jolly! oh, thanks!” and Sally jumped
up and kissed his wife in gratitude. “It’ll
be three thousand—­three whole thousand!
how much of it can we spend, Aleck? Make it liberal!—­do,
dear, that’s a good fellow.”

Aleck was pleased; so pleased that she yielded to
the pressure and conceded a sum which her judgment
told her was a foolish extravagance —­a
thousand dollars. Sally kissed her half a dozen
times and even in that way could not express all his
joy and thankfulness. This new access of gratitude
and affection carried Aleck quite beyond the bounds
of prudence, and before she could restrain herself
she had made her darling another grant—­a
couple of thousand out of the fifty or sixty which
she meant to clear within a year of the twenty which
still remained of the bequest. The happy tears
sprang to Sally’s eyes, and he said: